How did the coup against Keir Starmer go wrong?

0:28When people turn to telehealth or weight loss, they're looking for real support.

0:33This is a Global Player original podcast. How long do you think the Prime Minister has got? Well, I think what happened yesterday was that the Labour Party as a whole looked over the precipice and thought the right thing to do is to support our leader who was elected 18 months ago with a clear mandate. That was the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, saying that the Labour Party had looked over the brink and stepped back again. Keir Starmer is still in office. He's still Prime Minister. But is he, as Kemi Badenoch has argued, in office but not in power? What actually happened yesterday? What do we understand 24 hours later about an attempted coup that never quite took off?

1:21Welcome to the News Agents.

1:27The News Agents. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And Monday was one of those very weird Westminster days where if, unlike us, you are a normal person who maybe looked at the news first thing in the morning and looked at the news when you left work in the evening, you will have been blissfully unaware that something almost happened. And the rest of us journalists and so on, covering it minute by minute, had to describe a series of events that looked as if it might just have led to Keir Starmer being removed from office, but it didn't. We were doing the show almost in real time yesterday, almost a sort of rolling news, which is a little bit difficult sometimes when you're a podcast.

2:10But where we've got to is we saw a series of events where first thing in the morning, Keir Starmer lost another key number 10 operative. That's Tim Allen, his director of communications. Shortly afterwards, the whole of Westminster started to reverberate because we heard that Anasawa, the Scottish Labour leader, would call on Keir Starmer to resign. And it was at that moment that it looked as if the dominoes, the line of dominoes, were about to fall. And then we waited and we waited. And actually, rather than the dominoes falling, they came out fighting one by one for Keir Starmer. I like fighting dominoes.

2:46Yeah, yeah, yeah. My favourite thing. My favourite thing on a Saturday evening. Exactly. it's so much better than greyhound racing absolutely well particularly for you you wouldn't like that definitely not but when we left we were just hearing from our editor Tom that we might have to be back here doing an emergency episode if Keir Starmer had vanished by 7 o 'clock last night absolutely and we did not do that because by the time we got to the evening all the cabinet pretty much to a man and woman had come out admittedly with varying degrees of enthusiasm saying that Keir Starmer should fight on He went to the parliamentary Labour Party meeting that evening and most people seem to think that he gave a pretty robust performance at that meeting.

3:28And in the meantime as well, we've seen the slightly weird sight of perhaps his chief rival from within the cabinet for the top job, West Streeting, the health secretary, preemptively giving his communications, his WhatsApp messages with a disgraced Peter Mandelson in an attempt, it seems, to try and get ahead of the documents being released and trying to say that I've got nothing to hide. And we're left in a situation where much of the Labour Party is wondering what yesterday was about. Was it about, and this is one theory, a coup attempt basically devised between Anasawa and West Streeting, who are close allies?

4:10And was it a little bit like that famous 2009 moment where James Pennell, then a Labour cabinet secretary, resigned, expected David Miliband, then foreign secretary, to go with him? Miliband bottled it and Gordon Brown stayed in place. Well, let's take you, first of all, into that PLP meeting that was held at six o 'clock last night. I've been speaking to MPs in the room and you won't be surprised to hear that there were sort of differing responses to what actually went on. But one person said it was very emotional. It was packed with their words, all the giants. And sometimes we talk about the parliamentary Labour Party without registering that at these meetings you get the peers as well as the MPs.

4:53And in the room, this person talked about the giants. Neil Kinnock was there. David Blunkett was there. Angie Hunter was there. Around 200 people, MPs and peers. And this person described an elderly peer at the very front. Somebody who clearly was struggling with their flexibility and ability to sort of move around easily. But she said this elderly peer was on his feet every single time there was the chance for them to applaud. In other words, this was a show of force. This was a show of support. If you didn't really like Keir Starmer, you would not have attended the meeting, is my sense. So most of the people in the room were there to show their support.

5:37And they came because they'd been worried about the events of the day. They came because of Anna Sawa's intervention. And they came because they wanted to show it wasn't just the cabinet supporting, but it was the rest of the parliamentary party. And Keir Starmer, apparently he used many of the lines that he'd used on that speech in Hastings last week, where he began by talking about the victims. He reiterated his apology personally to the victims and he said he took full responsibility. He wasn't blaming Morgan McSweeney, who's now gone. And then he turned the corner and he said this was a fight for the future of our country, for democracy.

6:12and he made it about reform. And the people I've been speaking to said that was the point at which the room was kind of on side. In other words, he made it sound existential. Like if you start to get rid of me, you are starting to open the door to reform and then I don't know how we get back to a place of sort of solid democracy. David Blunkett apparently also stood up and said, never forget, I mean, this is sort of not a quote, but this is the sense of what he said, never forget how hard we have to fight to get into government and even he, somebody who'd had issues with Keir Starmer over policy, the child allowance.

6:47Well, yeah, he called the government dire at the weekend. Well, he did. I mean, I think that was the point, that somebody who had been an internal critic of the government and of Starmer was still saying, don't lose sight of the mission, don't throw it away. There were about 44 questions. Most of them were, I think, fairly supportive, but not all of them. And this person said it was unheard of to allow for 40 questions. In other words, Keir Starmer was there to answer all the worries they had. Somebody else who was less supportive of what went on in the PLP said to me, I would have really liked a nod to the end of the sort of blokey back slapping that had got us to where we were as a party.

7:28She said, instead, I got a football analogy and a battle cry. You know, it still sounded a little bit too male. You know, let's fight on. and it wasn't the tone that they were looking for. But I think at the end of that hour or so, the sense you got was that the majority of the MPs, and as I say, about 200 in the room, realised that, as Ed Miliband just said, they went as close to the precipice as it was comfortable to get without suddenly going, oh my God, we're going to be out of power ourselves if we don't get a grip on this. Now, how long that will last, obviously, is the big question. And I have to say to your point earlier, I know that West Streeting has adamantly denied being part of that coup and he blames number 10.

8:19And to be fair, West Streeting is quite often the fall guy for number 10 when something is going wrong. But he's also plotting all the time. And this is the thing. I mean, I think we said yesterday that it was very likely that if Starmer could get to that PLP meeting, that exactly the sort of course of events you've just described would likely play out. because that's how those meetings often work. You know, they're very rarely, they're often built up. They're rarely bloodbaths. As you say, most of the people who actually don't like the guy don't turn up. And, you know, my understanding is as well that there was a, let's say, a sort of series of auditions for ministerial jobs from supportive backbenchers, you know, offering their support.

8:55That is often how it goes. I think the Labour Party this morning is sort of tussling with and trying to analyse exactly what happened yesterday. And as we're saying, there's kind of two schools of thought in it. One basically put about by the anti-West Streeting camp and one put about by those who are more favourable to him. One is that it was a coup attempt and that it was something that was hatched up, as we're saying, between Anna Sawa, the sort of contingent of Scottish Labour MPs who are very friendly with West Streeting. West Streeting's got a lot of support on the Labour benches and that for whatever reason, it didn't quite happen.

9:29The other one is simply that Sawa, look, as we were sort of saying yesterday again, he's got his own reasons to do what he did. You know, he is the leader of what is in effect an independent branch of the Labour Party in Scotland. They're facing difficult elections that they had hoped might go far better for them. They're trying desperately to roll the dice, having slid down the polls since Labour came to office, to try and get back in the game in Holyrood, to try and dislodge the SNP who have been in office in Holyrood since 2007, and that therefore this was as much about Scottish politics and Scottish Labour politics as it is about national politics.

10:10Now, that still leaves Scottish Labour and the Labour Party in some turmoil, because bear in mind, you know, as I was saying yesterday, we're in a situation where the Labour Party is going into those elections, and imagine just how difficult the relationship is now going to be between the Central Party and Scottish Labour. Do Labour cabinet ministers go up and fight for Anna Sawa and for Scottish Labour, despite the fact that Anna Sawa has said that the Labour Party leader Keir Starmer should no longer be in office? Likewise, ditto with Keir Starmer. And I think my sense is, I mean, look, some people are saying to me that they think that the main takeaway of this morning and yesterday is how badly Wes Streeting's intervention has gone down with certain parts, certainly of the government and certain parts of the PLP for two reasons.

10:59When you say intervention, Wes Streeting's intervention. This is Wes Streeting. So first of all, obviously, there is bad blood for those who think that this was a coup. Now, this is, as you say, being furiously denied by Wes Streeting. Hard to get to the bottom of exactly what happened so soon afterwards. But I'm talking more about what Streeting did in releasing the texts between himself and Mandelson. And the reason that that has gone down badly is for a few reasons. One, they see it, parts of the government see it, as part of the open plotting that they think Streeting is doing. That this is about clearing the decks in anticipation of a leadership bid.

11:38Because the idea that basically that, you know, a relationship with Mandelson is such a toxic thing that he's trying to get out ahead of it. The police have come out this morning and as has the cabinet office, the government urging other cabinet ministers not to publish their text messages and WhatsApps with Mandelson because there's a live investigation going on to it. And also linked to the first point, there is a feeling that not only is it about Mandelson himself and trying to cleanse that relationship, but Cal Surprise, the sort of texts that have been released and published, just so happened to show that West Streeting was actually quite critical of Israel and quite critical, actually talking actively about the idea with Mandelson of war crimes being committed.

12:20And this person said to me, the idea that you publish what are attacks on economics, because streeting also said the government in these texts has no growth strategy, that you publish attacks on economics and foreign policy is so disloyal. And I think it feels to me that one way or the other, I'm not sure streeting has got long for the government in a sense that I'm not sure that cabinet is big enough for both Starmer and streeting on the trajectory currently that streeting is going in. I think it's really interesting just to analyze those minutes between Anasawa's speech and obviously all the kind of support that came out of the cabinet, because in those gaps is when things happen or they don't happen.

13:00Now, you raise the specter of the 2009 James Purnell putsch, right, which was when Gordon Brown's minister expected David Miliband to follow him. He was the culture secretary, I think. He was the culture secretary at the time and David Miliband was foreign secretary. So it would have been obviously a big scalp and people were looking at David Miliband there as a possible brown successor. And it didn't happen. Now, one thing I'd say about the intervention of Anas Sawa is, and I think the way you phrased it was absolutely right, a branch of government. It is not unprecedented for the same party to have a go at Westminster.

13:38We saw it with Douglas Ross, who was the leader of the Scottish Tories, who had a go at Boris Johnson. And sometimes it's just a very sort of clear way of differentiating who you are and what your mandate is for a country that votes very differently, i.e. Scotland, to Westminster. And we have seen that. I think it would have been understandable for Anasawa just to go, shit, you know, we've been losing out to the SNP. We now might actually lose out to reform in second place in these May elections. I've got to do something and this is my distance. But it's also possible that without any affirmative sort of action from Wes Streeting, he still expected that others would follow suit.

14:22Both theories can be true. Both theories can be true. And from what we know, Anasawa and Wes Streeting didn't actually talk. They didn't communicate on Monday. But there are other names that have been mentioned. The Labour Welsh leader, even Sadiq Khan in London. It is possible that without anyone putting anything in writing or even saying things out loud, Anasawa thought he was triggering something that would allow all the unhappiness that people had been voicing quietly to come out. And in that half an hour, it didn't. Now, there are lots of questions over Keir Starmer and whether he actually put out a three line whipped cabinet saying you better get there.

14:59whether it was Lammy who was the first out the traps and John Healy who's pretty well respected as the defence secretary sort of holding the part together where they said everyone's got to go go in there and if you're not then we will look for your name I think you're right I think I think whether West Streeting had a part in any plot or not and I'm inclined to think that actually I don't believe it was a mashed up plot between Sarwa and West Streeting but I think it makes his position now complicated. Very difficult. Very difficult. And I think the releasing, as you say, of the emails, not just for what it shows, but for the fact he went out on a limb.

15:38He clearly didn't do it with Starmer's approval. And we still don't know if he's released all of them. No. Right? I mean, it's entirely possible that he's released the ones that sort of served their purpose and deleted the rest. Yes, indeed. And I think also what happened yesterday is that reflecting as part of that conversation we had in real time is that the Labour Party feels deeply deeply conflicted about this affair and this episode there is a lot of agreement that Keir Starmer in lots of ways certainly domestically has proven a somewhat poor prime minister and certainly a poor political leader that he hasn't been able to set out exactly what he's for what he wants what his values are what his mission is, and he certainly hasn't been able to communicate very well.

16:26He's, you know, gone through slogans, he's gone through priorities, he's gone through ideas, you know, he's burnt through them one after the other. There's been very little consistency. There have been so many unforced errors of which the Mandelson affair is considered the climax, the culmination. There is, you know, very, very little disagreement about that. But there is a far greater sense of disagreement and genuine, I think, dilemma about whether it is over this that Starmer should go. and I think that what you're seeing as well is I mean the one thing I would say though is that you know from the PLP meeting as you say Emily there was a lot of briefing that came out from it this is a cure I've never seen before this is a cure unleashed this is a cure who seems changed sort of unshackled from Morgan McSweeney and those around him if only people could see I heard Baroness Helena Kennedy saying this yesterday if only we could see the cure that we all see privately this is something that is often said about failing prime ministers you know this is something that you know whether it goes from John Biden I think a lot of people said it about Biden when it's like oh if you could only see him in private and everyone's like well of course we can't he's the US president unfortunately 70 million people can't meet the prime minister in private between now and the next election so so but that is something that is always said and and usually the failures of a government and a prime minister are something specific to them you know advisors are around them and can be powerful but so much of it ultimately flows from them and I'm look he is now doing this very big clear out of number 10 you know we saw tim allen go yesterday which i'm told is about the fact that he was a recommendation of peter mandelson's and i think there may be some concern about communications that may have happened between mandelson and allen and maybe they're getting ahead of that before their eventual publication we're seeing chris wormhold the cabinet secretary britain's top civil servant i understand was sacked yesterday by the prime Minister.

18:13It's now just a case of the negotiations that's going to be announced in a few days. So, you know, we're seeing a top political clear out of number 10, Prime Minister's top advisors, and the head of the civil service, all at once, it is a sort of dizzying churn, whether that enables, I mean, this is just I mean, I think Tim Allen, for example, was the fourth or fifth comms director for Keir Starmer in just 18 months. He's also burned through, I think, three chiefs of staff. Whether you're able to replace these principal aides and it make a material difference to the direction of the government, perhaps.

18:46But I think many MPs were worried that this is more about Starmer than those around him. But it is an amazing thing to see that level of churn all at once. Yeah, but all I'd say is that something must be done quite often doesn't go anywhere. And I remember the Brown government very well. I remember all those attempted coups. You know, there was Jeff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt at one point. There was James Purnell and maybe there was David Miliband. There were a lot of people who kind of like walked up to the lion and sort of, you know, prodded it and then ran away. Because unless you know, you might know what step one is, i.e.

19:22we don't like this guy in charge, let's remove him. But if you don't know what step two and three is, the process, the numbers, you know, people, it always goes back to the maths, have you got the support to do it and the succession plan, then you can't do anything. And I mean the irony of course is that when Brown was in trouble who did he call up to sort of shore things up for him? The man with a v-neck jumper Peter Mandelson. That would be a bold move from Stammer at this stage. It really would. But I guess what I'm trying to say is those are the sort of the knee-jerk moments when you think you're in trouble and you turn around and you do the worst thing possible rather rather than the sensible thing.

20:02But I think, certainly for the Labour Party, it is harder to remove people from office. As they know, they've only had four ever elected prime ministers. So I think that was an important part of the tenor of the conversation yesterday. We're not very good at this, is the subtext. We're not very good at getting people into power. Like, for God's sake, think twice before you fuck it up. Yeah, I mean, the Labour Party has only ever removed one of its leaders in a direct fashion as a result of a challenge. And that was J.R. Klein's over a century ago. So, you know, there's not much of a... Are we due one?

20:38Yeah, we could be due one. Take it out on poor J.R. But yeah, look, who shot J.R.? Look, I think that is absolutely... I think that there is a lot of fear in the Labour Party right now. There's a lot of fear about the markets and market potential reaction, which number 10 is putting around with some success. And it's not entirely unjustified. I think there is fear about what happens when you rip the band-aid of Keir Starmer away from the Labour Party, where there is so much bloodlust just bubbling around, right? You can see it and you can feel it with the briefing that it is going on. A Labour Party leadership contest, and I think it will come, but a Labour Party leadership contest is going to be a really bloody affair.

21:20There are just so many unresolved tensions within the Labour Party at the moment. ideological, how to deal with reform, personality clashes, that it is going to be really, really nasty. And you can see that whether it's streeting or with Rayner or Miliband or whoever it happens to be. And so I think that the idea of doing it in this way, in an uncontrolled way, was enough to deter a sufficient number of Labour MPs and the Cabinet itself. Not least because, as we've said for the last week or so, So every single one of the potential replacements for Starmer are themselves highly problematic in one way or another.

22:00It is as if the executioners have got blades above their own heads. One thing I'd say to your list, and you've sort of reeled off the usual suspects, Rainer, who clearly has the mortgage problems still to overcome. Burnham, who's not in Parliament. Ed Miliband, who's tried and failed once already. The one missing from that list. Don't think about Al Kahn's with his quiet beverage. With his quiet beverage. The one missing from that list, I'd say, is Shabana Mahmood, who I think is massively underpriced in this. She is sitting on a very small majority, I think about 3 ,000. But this is the year that if things go Labour's way, this is one chance, this is the year where if things go Labour's way, we could be looking at a net migration figure by September of about zero.

22:46I mean, it would be unprecedented. I mean, not unprecedented, but for decades. It is entirely possible that we will be looking at net migration at zero or roundabouts then. And if that happens, Shabana Mahmood, I think, leaps to the top of the pile as the Home Secretary. I just don't see it. who has sorted out the one problem that every voter, pretty much across the board, has said is their number one, number one stroke, number two priority. So I would say that she may not be front and centre of people's thoughts at the moment, certainly on the left of the party, but she may very well be a proper contender in the next six months.

23:30I'm sure she's a contender. I think the blade above her neck is just simply her political reputation within the Labour Party, which is that she's right-wing. and it's very hard if you're right wing. I mean, I don't think that's entirely fair, by the way, but it's also to some extent a reputation she herself has cultivated. So it's tricky. If she gets the numbers down, they might be thinking about her a bit differently. Maybe, perhaps. But again, that requires us to get to that point. And that is another reason why I think Starmer survived yesterday, which is it is pretty much in everyone's interest, apart from maybe streating, for this contest to come a bit later than it is.

23:58I do think, just in terms of just finishing up on West, it leaves Starmer. Look, he survived. That's a net plus. I think there can be no doubt that his authority continues to weaken. I think some of that is, to some extent, a little unfair around the Mandelson thing in particular, but overall, much of it is at own doing. I do think that he continues to... He is on borrowed time. The question is simply when. And this story, even the Mandelson story, is going to get worse before it gets better because we are going to see those documents released and there is just no way and no world where that doesn't damage him and damage his government further.

24:33But it feels to me, you know, obviously in terms of what's coming up we've got gorton by election we've got may and the may elections actually the weird thing is i mean we've been talking about that 2009 analogy emily that came after the local election results of that year which were terrible and actually perhaps if if sarwalt were really interested simply it didn't it came on the eve of the local election well they were expected to be yeah but it was on the night yeah i i remember it because i was it It came five minutes to ten on the night before the local election results. I think it was when they were...

25:08It was the night of the election results. It was election night itself. It was the night that people had... It was the night that the polls closed. Yeah, election night. Yeah, no, exactly. But, I mean, you know, that, I think, was the moment everyone was expecting. The Mandelson debacle has kind of brought it all forward. And in that sense, after all of that, we're kind of where we were about a week ago, after all the sound and fury. We'll be back in a moment looking at King Charles' intervention into the Andrews scandal and what we now know about the Epstein files thanks to some unredacted material.

25:59Conservative Party, Kemi Betanel, back to the studio. The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey. The news that matters from the UK and around the world and why it matters to you. Listen on our free Global Player app or the LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation. When people turn to healthcare for weight loss, they're looking for real support. That's why more people are choosing orderlymeds.com. Orderly Meds connects you with real doctors and access to proven GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and terzepatide. No guessing, just a more supportive experience. And all shipped directly to your door in discreet packaging.

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